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The Late Steve Smith (Family Dad)
The Late Steve Smith is the seventh episode of the eleventh season of the animated series Family Dad. In the episode, Steve attempts to make it on time to a birthday dinner date for Debbye. He is sidetracked by Stewie and Brian, who force him to test out Stewie's new time machine, which only goes forward in time. After overshooting and thus going forward to the year 10,000 AD, they must keep traveling forward in time until a backwards time machine has been invented. The episode was written by Lewis Morton and directed by Peter Avanzino, and guest stars Carmen Electra, Billy West, and Tress MacNeille. The episode was met with critical acclaim from critics and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program in 2011. In 2013, fans ranked it the fourth best episode in the history of the series. Plot Steve and Debbie's growing relationship is marred by Steve's constant tardiness. After arriving late for school and their date because Peter and Francine were having loud sex at their room, Steve is determined to make it up to Debbie by skipping a party hosted by Mayor Adam West and meeting Debbie for a birthday dinner date at "Cavern on the Green," a fancy restaurant situated in a deep cave with naturally occurring stalagmites. As Steve prepares to leave for the date, Stewie forces him to test his newly invented one-way time machine, which is only able to travel to the future (to prevent changing the past and the creation of paradoxes), by moving one minute forward in time. As Stewie, Steve and Brian prepare the machine, Steve records a message in a video birthday card for Debbie, apologizing for being one minute late and explaining the situation. As he is about to finish, Stewie accidentally pulls the lever too far, sending them forward into the year 10,000 AD. During the trip, Steve loses the card in the time stream. Meanwhile, a nuclear accident at Mayor West's party kills all but West, leading Debbie and the Smith family, who think Steve and the others had gone there, to believe the trio are now dead. Stewie, Brian and Steve enter the machine. Steve begins recording an apology for being late again on Francine's birthday card, while Stewie intends to test the machine by sending it one minute forward in time. However, Stewie trips and falls down while clutching the activation lever, sending the machine hurtling out of control; in the process, Steve loses Francine's birthday card out the window. Stewie gets back to his feet and shuts down the machine, but the occupants find that the interior of the Smith house has been replaced by a ruined city. The date on the machine's display reads: 3 December, 10,000 AD. Steve is stunned at being thrown so far forward in time, saying that he can't be late for Francine's birthday party; however, Stewie reminds Steve that their family, as well as everyone else they have ever known, has been dead for thousands of years. The trio explore their ruined world, but are unimpressed with the post-apocalyptic setting. After talking to a group of cavemen, Stewie realizes that while they cannot travel backward in time, they can travel forward to a point where someone else has invented a backward-traveling time machine, and use that to return home. They make a series of progressively larger jumps through time while attempting to find a sufficiently advanced civilization, and while they encounter a number of strange sights, they have no luck in finding a way home. Brian, Stewie and Steve arrive in the year Five Million AD; a race of enlightened, purple-skinned humanoids live on Earth's surface, while Dumblocks - savage, primitive creatures - live below ground. Stewie asks whether these advanced people have invented a backwards-traveling time machine, and is told that they have not, although if they focus their mental efforts toward the problem, they should be able to perfect a solution within five years. The three promptly jump forward another five years, only to discover that in that time, the Dumblocks have risen up and slaughtered the entire surface population. The year Ten Million AD is a nightmare where dogs are engaged in a violent, genocidal war against the remnants of mankind. Brian cheerfully observes that this "seems like a nice future", and suggests that they remain there, but Stewie and Steve quickly engage the next jump. They next arrive in Fifty Million AD, a paradise inhabited by beautiful and brilliant women who immediately recognize the group as time travelers and actually have a method of traveling back in time. Steve and Brian are invited to a sensual "fertility banquet", but Stewie, unhappy about there being only females, spitefully activates the time machine. This triggers a fight among the three, and they travel a large distance forward in time, finally arriving in One Billion AD. Here, in the far future, Earth has been reduced to a scorched, barren wasteland, and all life is extinct. Steve wants to keep traveling forward, but Stewie says this would be futile, as Earth is now a dead world. Distraught, Steve wanders back to the remains of the Cavern on the Green, where he apologizes to his family for being a billion years late for their family dinner. Glancing down at the ground, he is shocked to find a message written there, one that is apparently addressed to him. By One Billion AD, these droplets of water have accumulated into a series of small stalagmites which spell out a brief message from Francine to the time-lost Steve, stating that while their time together was short, it was also the happiest of her life. Touched by the message, Steve returns to Brian and Stewie, saying that he has lived a good life, and proposes that they watch the end of the universe together. Turning the time machine to its maximum setting, they watch as the sun grows into a red giant, consuming the earth, and then fades into a white dwarf, followed by all of the other stars, eventually leaving nothing but darkness. This, to their astonishment, is followed by a tremendous explosion that Stewie recognizes as a second Big Bang; he realizes that time must be cyclical, resulting in the creation of a new universe that should be identical to the previous one. The time machine rapidly accelerates through the formation of the Earth, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and subsequent events in world history (with Stewie pausing only briefly to assassinate Adolf Hitler with his laser pistol). As they near their own time, they throttle the machine back, but accidentally skip forward to 10,000 AD a second time after Stewie falls down once more, forcing them to "go around again". The third trip happens without incident (although this time Stewie fails to kill Hitler and mistakenly shoots Eleanor Roosevelt), and the time machine materializes at Stewie's room a short time before it originally left. However, this universe appears to be displaced a few feet from the last one, as the machine appears in mid-air and crashes to the floor, killing this new universe's versions of Steve, Brian, and Stewie (and avoiding a time paradox). Steve is able to make his way to his mother's birthday on time. Meanwhile, Stewie buries the bodies of the deceased duplicates. Cast *Seth MacFarlane as Peter Smith, Stewie Smith, Brian Smith *Wendy Schaal as Francine Smith *Rachel MacFarlane as Hayley Smith *Scott Grimes as Steve Smith, Neil Goldman *Lizzy Kaplan as Debbie Hyman *Carmen Electra as Amazon Leader *Billy West as Male Intellectual *Tress MacNeille as Female Intellectual Source *1 *2 Category:Family Dad Category:List of Family Dad Episodes